Standard: Punctuation 1.5 Identify hyphens, dashes, brackets, and semicolons and use them correctly.

Goals:

Students will be able to express how and when to employ the dash, the hyphen, parenthesis, and semicolon's in sentences.

Objectives:

1. A rote memorization of rules of grammar concerning the dash, the hyphen, the parenthesis, and the semicolon's.
2. To assess student retention of specified punctuation and the necessity to redress specific concepts.

Materials:

Strunk and White, Flashcards, and two teams.

Introduction:

The flash card punctuation competition escalates in complexity as the rounds increase. For example, round one will feature a simple explanation of what a dash, hyphen, parenthesis, and semicolon's do in a sentence.
Round two requires the students to explain the rule that they have memorized by rote according to the example they are given. For example, the flash card will cite a sentence such as:
After his breakdown and removal from the school boarding house, his parents sent him to a London psychoanalyst in the belief, apparently, that his troubles were attributable to homosexuality (a condition his father considered only marginally less heinous than Bolshevism).6
The answer will be:
If a comment in parentheses is part of a longer sentence, the final punctuation goes outside the parentheses.
As the rounds increase the worth of the question also increases.

Development:

This is an introductory lesson for grammar. Meant to reinforce prior knowledge or compliment a formalized lesson plan on grammar.

Practice:

1.The class is divided into two equal teams.
2.Each coupled competitors will receive a flashcard placed in an envelope. Each envelope holds a flashcard with a question that the teacher holds the answer to.
3.When clearly signaled the students may read the flashcard.
4. The first student to raise his hand and answer wins a point for his team. The value of the point is determined by the complexity of the question. The complexity of the question increases per round. The round rotates per student turn. If you have thirty students, fifteen students equals a round.

Checking For Understanding:

This lesson determines several things: firstly, it determines the level of comfort-ability the student has with competition. Secondly, it determines the students ability to memorize by rote. Thirdly, it determines the students retention of punctuation. Fourthly, it determines what punctuation concepts the student favors and confuses. Lastly, it determines whether the instructor needs to refresh the class in punctuation.